Personal Diary / Journal - art, addiction and a whole lotta love

2020 Mar 17 Tuesday

Ok so we went shopping today. Escaped the quarantine a bit. This was decided yesterday. Baby Love liked my story a lot, maybe i'll post it on this platform alongside my journal.

The shopping experience was pretty lousy. With the exception of being outside on the way to the supermarket. That was absolutely delightful. The sun, the cold air.. but the supermarket was filled with people not caring about the distance rules in place to stop the virus from spreading. And the cashier wasn't wearing disposable gloves, although i don't think those do us much good anyway, maybe my parents are right and they're there to protect them from getting infected. Dunno.. they sanitized our hands at the entrance though. I reported the guy for having not worn gloves and for being a sleazy douchebag during all the time that the virus was not rampant. Making jokes with all the girls, taking witness the blue collar people next in line, you know, that sort of bloke. And the manager is the same. I kinda feel bad about it now, having reported them, but at the time it eased the hatred.

We woke at 6am today, thinking that the supermarket opens at seven, but alas it opened at 8. Two outings that meant. The sun felt really good. I noticed since this quarantine and watching Breaking Bad that i'm more attentive to how my voice sounds. Maybe it's a form of paranoia related to being cooped up in the house for so long, but maybe it's related to the excellent sound equalizer being applied to the show. I'm more focused on sound.

Yesterday i went through some stress, i watched some gameplay online while eating and it made me feel so full. I felt like my feelings filled my body somehow, me, who i appreciate more a feeling of clear-headedness and airiness. I couldn't gather my cool. The effect of this resource, "my cool" seemed to be wearing off. I danced a bit, focusing on my breathing, and that made it better, then my mother called and i sort of relaxed, being forced to act normal. The hunger kicked in a few hours later and i think better on an empty stomach. I hadn't eaten much, but i guess it went in the wrong way what with watching that game. I hate that i'm so susceptible to stress. I rarely admit this, but in the back of my mind i feel weak. I guess, i don't know. I feel like i have a strong mind, i know when i can't trust myself to think clearly and i don't make snap judgements during times of stress, but i feel like my emotional system, my stress-handling mechanisms are shot. Perhaps there is some training i could do to get myself into shape, become accustomed to it. I've been trying to find some sort of technique to manage it, but have come up short so far. I don't know if now is a good time to start training, what with the quarantine and all. I should avoid too much anxiety at this point, being in a point where i am cut off from my therapist and generally being outside. There is this factor of lack of freedom that i guess is a major cause for stress and anxiety, i guess i'm doing pretty well with this entrapment.

I slept for a long time today after returning from all the shopping. We mostly got luxury items. Maybe being this rested, as i am now, is a good time for some stress training. Let me search online for some strategies, see if someone has already been down this road and documented something helpful. Then it's off to the game watching, that seems like the best tactic to induce stress.

[..] ok i found some stuff online about how to manage stress. I want to use this journal for training up a bit. Let me jot down some ideas:

Don't disconnect, stay connected to yourself, your body, your mind, reality. Don't try to run from the stress.

Try out affirmations like "i have the resources necessary to handle my stress", "mind, please help me manage my stress level"

Dance, move about. Put on some music and dance. Move with abandon, being connected to your body and observing the stress feeling.

Sit down and focus on breathing.
___________

Some of these strategies must yield some success. I'll try now. First i gotta get stressed.

[..] ok got a little stress going on, not much. Time to try out the strategies.

[2 minutes later] managed to get the anxiety out of my breast and stomach, now only my head remains. The dancing was the thing that really helped with this. When i told myself to not run from stress and stay focused, i noticed a tendency to disconnect. My mind was becoming naturally blank and my body still. I don't know what to do about the head though. Let me try to do some conscious breathing.

[some few minutes later] i did it. The two main things were to avoid disconnectance and focus with my breathing, finding my stressed feelings with my breath and relaxing them. Now i'm almost normal. The dancing.. i don't know if it actually helped, as soon as i stopped, feelings of anxiety came back to my torso, but breathing sure helped. Only my head feels a bit differently textured at this point, i have to practice finding stress spots in my head as well, using my breath.

I'm ready to go again. Bring it on! -That's so nerdy to say.

[..] brought stress upon myself again, and again i neutralized it using my breath. I discovered that if i breathe a certain way through my nose, upward somehow, i can activate my head and feel like i'm giving it air. Tremendous discovery for me! This means i can totally handle stress. Now my levels are completely normal. Next step i guess is watching the game while breathing in a way to reduce stress as it comes along, making it not stick to my body.

[..] i did the conscious breathing thing while watching, and my head remained clear because i focused on it, but there was some tension in my body. I am currently doing the same exercise and relieving the torso of stress. My God, such a relief to be able to do this. In the past, during my zen years, i was always focusing on my breath, and i never got stressed. I kinda lost track of it i guess, noticing perhaps a certain disconnect, an out-of-it feeling during the day because i was so focused on the inside of my body. But now that i'm doing it again while doing household stuff, i don't necessarily feel disconnected. Ok, maybe a bit. But this is part of my mind/body practice. And i think this whole feeling of air going into my head, or targeting points of tension, i guess this is more connected to the imagination than to actual physics, but it certainly helps anyway. This is possibly the only way i can integrate an exercise of imagination into my mind/body practice. I tried to picture movement in my head and then let that guide me, but this mode of practice doesn't seem to stick. I should add it to the list of modes anyway, on my focus board. No reason why this cannot be documented. ..alright, done. I should also add trying to play what i hear in my head to the list of music practices.

Goes to show, breathing may very well be the purest instrument, between the movement group, the movement already found to be the purest instrument for expression. The purest of the purest. Because you already breathe. You have to. Movement, that's optional. You can either move or be relatively still, only the involuntary movements caused by breath and heart-beat and who knows what else, you know, those minor movements that you can't stop if you're standing for example.